Reviews"Microbes have shaped human history as much as human will has. In A History of the World in Six Plagues , Edna Bonhomme narrates centuries of the human-microbial dance, laying out how our destinies, liberties, and values are determined by how humans negotiate life on earth with our smallest living neighbors. Ambitious in her scope yet intimate in her humane storytelling, Bonhomme has written the interspecies book we need to navigate life on our interconnected planet. Brilliant, tender and illuminating." -- Steven W. Thrasher, PhD, author of the award-winning book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, "Edna Bonhomme narrates centuries of the human-microbial dance, laying out how our destinies, liberties, and values are determined by how humans negotiate life on earth with our smallest living neighbors. Brilliant, tender and illuminating." -- Steven W. Thrasher, PhD, author of the award-winning book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, "Equal Parts intimate portrait of illness and piercing analysis of our socio-political predicament. From empires to modern states, no civilization escapes the consequences of a plague. Let this book be a guide for our pandemic past, present, and probable--but by no means inescapable--future." --George Aumoithe, Assistant Professor of History at Harvard University, "An expansive portraiture of how colonialism and confinement have influenced our understanding of illness and humanity. Thankfully, due to the author's talent and sheer strength in combining personal narrative with history, this book is also tender as it tackles some of the most stigmatized subjects of our time." --Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing, "Pandemics thrive on inequities and widen them, providing more kindling for future plagues. This simple lesson has proven devastatingly difficult to learn. But I think that if everyone read Edna Bonhomme's incredible, humane, insightful book--and I hope they do--we might stand a chance of actually breaking the cycle of neglect and panic." --Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers I Contain Multitudes and An Immense World, "A breathtaking journey through the intertwined histories of contagions and systemic inequities that have shaped our history. Poignantly insightful and compelling, Bonhomme not only sheds light on past injustices but challenges us to confront our history and envision a more compassionate future." -- Uché Blackstock, New York Times bestselling author of Legacy, "This meticulously researched book shows us the ways that contagious illness frustrates humankind's instinct for control, and how people have found ways to care for one another in the worst of circumstances. A powerful book that shines a light on the parts of life we'd rather ignore, and the beauty that can arise from horror." --Sarah Jaffe, author of From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution, "This book is a tour de force! A brilliant and beautifully written account of the contours of contagion, health, race, gender, confinement, class, and space across multiple centuries and geohistories. A History of the World in Six Plagues will change how people think about public health and histories of medicine." --Dr. Tiffany N. Florvil, Associate Professor of History at The University of New Mexico and author of Mobilizing Black Germany, "A fierce polemic arguing that minorities and the poor suffer when diseases rage because governments and the medical profession give them short shrift... Searing." --Kirkus, "Edna Bonhomme's A History of the World in Six Plagues is an expansive portraiture of how colonialism and confinement have influenced our outstanding of illness and humanity. Thankfully, due to the author's talent and sheer strength in combining personal narrative with history, this book is also tender as it tackles some of the most stigmatized subjects of our time." --Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author
Dewey Edition23/eng/20240614
Dewey Decimal614.4/9
SynopsisAn "incredible, humane, insightful " (Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winner) account of humankind's battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines--in the vein of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body . With clear-eyed research and lush prose, A History of the World in Six Plagues is "a breathtaking journey through the intertwined histories of contagions and systemic inequities that have shaped our history" (Uché Blackstock, New York Times bestselling author). Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme's examination of humanity's disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease. Also a rising call to action, this "tour de force...will change the way people think about public health and histories of medicine" (Dr. Tiffany N. Florvil, author of Mobilizing Black Germany ).